Empires in strife: For over a thousand years the strongest military countries of the continent of Europe had contested with one another for supremacy. Jealous emperors, kings, princes and aristocratic states spent as much time in war as in peace advancing their often personal or religious ambitions through the sword more than diplomacy. Expansion and security of state were paramount for any dynasty. Soldiering and the military life were seen as a high vocation even a calling from God. By the 16th century the affairs of Europe coalesced around a handful of countries like the German states, the Austria Hungarian Empire, France, Spain, Sweden, Britain, Russia and an ambiguous role for the sprawling Ottoman Turkish Empire spanning into both Europe and the Near East. Countries like Italy, Greece and several of the later Balkan countries had not yet evolved as separate nations but within these territories were simmering seeds of nationalism and potential for future conflict.
Technical advances in maritime science made worldwide access possible and those countries bordering the Atlantic Ocean sought expansion beyond the traditional European mainland. This had special significance for England, Spain and to a lesser extent France. It was not until the late 19th century that the newly created German Empire sought overseas territories and this lack of World Empire for Germany was to play a significant role in the origins of the Great War.
By 1914 the principal countries of Europe were bound by mutual treaties of protection and military support in opposing national interests. The main power blocks of Europe at that time revolved around an axis of Germany and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in opposition to France, Britain and Russia. All these countries wooed and at other times threatened the Ottoman Empire. The causes of the Great War were manifold. Among which was the abject failure of diplomacy, vaulting military ambition, lack of perception as to the destructiveness of modern industrialised war and fear of territorial loss. The assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and his wife in Sarajevo, Serbia on June 28 1914 was simply the ignition fuse to an already explosive political atmosphere that was going to ignite anyway.
